DOCSLIB.ORG

The Governance of the International Monetary Fund

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Governance of the International Monetary Fund THE GOVERNANCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND ARIEL BUIRA At the end of World War II the Bretton Woods conference gave birth to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development—better known as the World Bank. These two international financial institutions have come to exert a major—some would say dominant—influence on economic policy in developing countries over the last half century. During the nineties these two institutions have placed significant importance on governance issues among their member countries. The IMF, in particular, has given increased attention to such issues, following the approval of the Guidance Note on governance by the Executive Board1 five years ago (IMF 1997). The promotion of transparency and accountability are now at the core of the IMF’s efforts to ensure the good use of public resources as well as the domes- tic ownership of IMF programs (IMF 2001b). In this respect, transparency and accountability are important global public goods in an increasingly interdepen- dent and democratic world. These two factors facilitate trust and confidence, bol- stering cooperation within the context of the international financial system. In recent years the IMF has developed and applied its instruments for pro- moting these objectives to an extent well beyond what was envisaged at the time the Guidance Note was approved. Indeed, the IMF helps countries identify any weaknesses that may exist in their institutional and regulatory frameworks that could give rise to poor governance; it then provides support in the design and implementation of remedial reforms. Given the strength of vested interests that benefit from the lack of transparency and accountability in these situations, over- coming these weaknesses often requires that the countries undertake significant structural reforms. By the very nature of its work then, the IMF exerts consider- able influence over the majority of its 183 member countries, on such economic Preparation of this chapter was financed in part by a grant from the OPEC Fund for International Development. It is a condensed version of a paper presented at the September 2000 meeting of the Intergovernmental Group of 24 on International Monetary Affairs and is based on and develops several themes in a paper prepared for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 225 226 POLITICS and politically sensitive matters as wage policies, taxation and public expenditure levels, public sector prices and tariffs, subsidies and pensions, privatisation poli- cies, the exchange regime and the exchange rate, interest rates and monetary pol- icy, trade policy, financial sector regulations and others. With resources of over $280 billion and an expanded mandate, the IMF is probably today the most pow- erful of all international institutions. In view of its influence, it is of interest to consider to what extent the IMF’s own governance meets the standards of transparency and accountability required to ensure the ownership of programs by member countries and the prudent and effective use of international public resources. This chapter takes up that ques- tion, and begins with an analysis of the IMF’s power structure and of the issues raised by its current patterns of decisionmaking. Given the similarities between the IMF’s and the World Bank’s composition of shareholding and the resulting decisionmaking structures, this analysis of the IMF can also be applied to the World Bank. CURRENT PATTERNS OF DECISIONMAKING The decisionmaking patterns of the IMF member countries involve three key areas: the distribution of voting powers, the rules for decisionmaking, and the management structure within the IMF. Each of these dimensions is examined below in terms of its potential and actual effects on IMF policies and operations. Voting powers Two aspects are remarkable in the distribution of voting power in the IMF. One is the skewed distribution of voting rights between industrial and developing countries, due in part to the diminished role of basic votes relative to quota-based votes. The other is that some of the variables used to determine quotas—a cru- cial element of voting powers—have not changed in more than 50 years. Both facts suggest that voting powers have not kept pace with changes in the global economy, undermining the IMF’s capacity to pursue its cooperative mandate. Basic votes and quota-based votes. IMF members do not have equal voting power. Instead, they have weighted voting, a departure from the traditional practice of international organizations. To clarify, the vote of an IMF member has two com- ponents. Each member has 250 basic votes simply by virtue of its membership, as a symbolic recognition of the principle of the legal equality of states. Each mem- ber also has one additional vote for every 100,000 Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) of its quota. Because the number of basic votes has not changed with successive quota increases, the ratio of basic votes to total votes has declined from 12.4 per- cent of the voting power of the countries participating in the Bretton Woods con- THE GOVERNANCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND 227 ference (IMF 1993, schedule A) to 2.1 percent today, despite the entry of 135 new member countries. In fact, as a proportion of the total, the basic votes of the orig- inal members have declined from more than 12 percent to less than 0.4 percent as a result of a 37-fold increase in total quotas. This has changed the power structure of the IMF since the importance of the basic vote of a country is inversely related to the size of its economy, as basic votes represent a substantially higher propor- tion of the voting power of small countries. To illustrate: A country with a quota of 10 million SDRs would be entitled to 350 votes—100 votes due to its quota size and 250 basic votes for being a mem- ber. If the size of quotas is multiplied by ten, the country will have 1000 votes on account of its quota and 250 basic votes, for a total of 1250 votes. Thus the share of basic votes declines from over 70 percent to 20 percent of the total. Recall that in 1945 there were 14 countries—almost a third of the membership—whose quota was $10 million or less, and 28 countries—more than half the total—whose quotas were $50 million or less. With the passage of time, inflation and economic growth have combined to increase the size of the quotas. But since the number of basic votes has remained constant, their relative proportion to the total has declined, emasculating the role of basic votes and the relative influence of devel- oping countries. Determination of quotas. Because members’ quotas are the main factor determin- ing voting rights, the process for setting such quotas should also be examined. It has been said that the quotas of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China were politically determined at the Bretton Woods conference. Raymond Mikesell, who was asked by the U.S. Treasury to estimate the first quo- tas, writes: In mid-April 1943, White [i.e. Harry Dexter White, chief international economist at the U.S. Treasury in 1942–44] called me to his office and asked that I prepare a formula for the . quotas that would be based on the mem- bers’ gold and dollar holdings, national incomes, and foreign trade. He gave no instructions on the weights to be used, but I was to give the United States a quota of approximately $2.9 billion; the United Kingdom (including its colonies), about half the U.S. quota; the Soviet Union, an amount just under that of the United Kingdom; and China, somewhat less. He also wanted the total of the quotas to be about $10 billion. White’s major con- cern was that our military allies (President Roosevelt’s Big Four) should have the largest quotas, with a ranking on which the president and the sec- retary of state had agreed....I confess to having exercised a certain amount of freedom in making these estimates in order to achieve the predetermined quotas. (1994, pp. 22–23) 228 POLITICS Subsequently,at the meeting of the Committee on Quotas,Mikesell was asked to explain the basis for his quota estimates, and he further writes: I had anticipated this request and gave a rambling twenty-minute seminar on the factors taken into account in calculating the quotas, but I did not reveal the formula. I tried to make the process appear as scientific as possi- ble, but the delegates were intelligent enough to know that the process was more political than scientific. (1994, pp. 35–36) Given these historical facts, it is remarkable that—with only some adjust- ments in the weighting and definition of the main variables—the IMF contin- ues to use the original formula for determining members’ quotas. It is certainly understandable that the lack of equity and rationality in the quota criteria con- tinues to cause controversy and mistrust among members today, just as it did 50 years ago. The original formula is now combined with four other formulas, which give different weights to the same variables, and an element of discretion is used in selecting the formula to be applied in each case. (At times, the average of the various calculations is used to set a country’s quota.) It is therefore not surprising that current quotas are far from representative of the actual sizes of economies—of their ability to contribute to the IMF or of their importance in the world economy. This can be easily illustrated by the fact that such large countries as Brazil, Mexico, and the Republic of Korea, with real GNPs and populations much larger than those of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, had quotas in 1999 that were only a fraction of those countries’ and fewer votes (table 1).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Organizational Framework of the G-77
    17 CHAPTER 2 ORGANIZATIONAL FRAMEWORK OF THE GROUP OF 77 by Lydia Swart …neither the Western media nor Western scholars pay much attention to the multilateral policies and practices of the states variously described as the South, the third world, or developing countries. In particular, patterns of cooperation among these states in pursuit of common interests at the UN are often ignored or dismissed as of little consequence. Sally Morphet, 2004 Institutional Arrangements: UNCTAD The institutional arrangements of the G-77 developed slowly. In its first years, the G-77’s activities primarily coalesced around UNCTAD as it was regarded by the South as the key locus to improve conditions of trade for development and to form a counterbalance to the Bretton Woods Institutions dominated by the North. The G-77 focus on UNCTAD was so pronounced that until 1976—when it held a Conference on Economic Cooperation among Developing Countries—the group only convened high-level meetings in preparation for UNCTAD sessions. These ministerial meetings to prepare for UNCTAD started in 1967 at the initiative of the Group of 31, consisting of developing countries that were members of UNCTAD’s Trade and Development Board (TDB), represented by Ambassadors in Geneva.10 The first G-77 ministerial meeting in 1967 adopted the Charter of Algiers, which details the G-77’s programme of action but is rather short on internal institutional issues. It is only at the very end of the Algiers Charter that a few organizational aspects are mentioned. The G-77 decided to meet at the ministerial level as “often as this may be deemed necessary” but “always prior to the convening of sessions” of 10 Later referred to as preparatory meetings.
    [Show full text]
  • Economic Growth and the Pursuit of Inequality Reduction in Africa
    Economic Growth and the Pursuit of Inequality Reduction in Africa Working Paper commissioned by the Group of 24 and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung New York October 2018 Haroon Bhorat and Karmen Naidoo1 This paper is part of the Growth and Reducing Inequality Working Paper Series, which is a joint effort of the G-24 and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung New York to gather and disseminate a diverse range of perspectives and research on trends, drivers and policy responses relevant to developing country efforts to boost growth and reduce inequality. The series comprises selected policy-oriented research papers contributed by presenters at a Special Workshop the G-24 held in Geneva (September 2017) in collaboration with the International Labour Organization and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, as well as relevant sessions in G-24 Technical Group Meetings. 1 Haroon Bhorat is Director of the Development Policy Research Unit and Professor in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town. Karmen Naidoo is a PhD Candidate and Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA (formerly Senior Researcher at the Development Policy Research Unit, University of Cape Town). Abstract Economic growth across the African continent has remained robust in the post-2000 period. Despite the promising macroeconomic environment, poverty reduction has been slow and inequality has remained high while rising in some cases. The analysis in this paper shows that Africa’s average Gini coefficient is higher than that of other developing regions. The notion of a cluster of high-inequality African economies seems important to understand Africa’s higher levels of inequality.
    [Show full text]
  • Will the BRICS Provide the Global Public Goods the World Needs?
    June 2014 Report Will the BRICS provide the Global Public Goods the world needs? Zhenbo Hou, Jodie Keane and Dirk Willem te Velde Global governance is a global public good that is undersupplied, and this harms development. Global decision making on trade, climate and finance issues has stalled over the last decade in part because of the rise of BRICS (Brazil Russia Indonesia China South Africa) vis-a-vis developed countries and the US in particular. The trade and climate change regimes share some similarities, with the WTO and UNFCCC processes both being democratic. Although the outcomes of recent negotiating rounds to formulate new global rules are viewed mildly positively, there remain a number of areas of unfinished business in both areas including major failings in climate mitigation. It is unclear whether or how these will be resolved in the near to medium future. The formulation of global rules for finance remains in its infancy and have been overtaken by the introduction of new products and technology. One could envisage that in the future progress on formal rule-making could proceed along similar lines to that of the global trade regime: with agreement on limited sectoral agreements which is being elaborated on overtime. The BRICS are increasingly pro-active in global governance processes. Whilst their willingness to engage is strong, they are yet to speak with one voice on specific issues. Their differences with the established powers have so far led to a vacuum in the provision of global governance public goods. Other groupings could act as a stepping stone towards global governance: the EU can be used to provide positive incentives in the area of climate negotiations, the G20 can be used to build trust in financial and monetary governance, and regional groupings are increasingly being used to govern trade.
    [Show full text]
  • Developing Countries and the Politics of Sustainable Development
    Developing Countries and the Politics of Sustainable Development By ADIL NAJAM Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering (1989), University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan Specialization in Negotiation (1994), Program on Negotiation at HarvardLaw School, Cambridge, Mass., USA Submitted to the Technology and Policy Program and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degrees of Master of Science in Technology and Policy and Master of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY June 1996 © Adil Najam, 1996. All rights reserved The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part. Signature of author Technology and Policy Program May 15, 1996 Certified by FRED MOAVENZADEH, Ph.D. Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Director, Technology and Development Program Thesis Supervisor Accepted by RICH AREdT. NEUF'.ILLE, Ph.D. Professor o and Environmc:tal Engineering .Chairma MIT Technology and Policy Program Accepted by Accepted JOSEPIM.by SUSSMAN, Ph. D. J. R. East Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Chairman, Departmental Committee on Graduate Studies Developing Countries and the Politics of Sustainable Development BY ADIL NAJAM Submitted to the Technology and Policy Program and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering on May 15, 1996, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degrees of Master of Science inTechnology and Policy and Master of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering ABSTRACT This thesis is about the political context in which global environmental policy decisions are made.
    [Show full text]
  • Relations of Latin America and the Caribbean with India: a Window of Opportunity
    Relations of Latin America and the Caribbean with India: A window of opportunity Extra-Regional Relations Regional Meeting on economic and trade relations of Latin America and the Caribbean with nations of the Pacific, India and Africa Caracas, Venezuela 9 and 10 October 2014 SP/RRRECALCPIA/DT N° 2-14 Copyright © SELA, October 2014. All rights reserved. Printed in the Permanent Secretariat of SELA, Caracas, Venezuela. The Press and Publications Department of the Permanent Secretariat of SELA must authorise reproduction of this document, whether totally or partially, through [email protected]. The Member States and their government institutions may reproduce this document without prior authorisation, provided that the source is mentioned and the Secretariat is aware of said reproduction. Relations of Latin America and the Caribbean with India: SP/RRRECALCPIA/DT N° 2-14 A window of opportunity C O N T E N T S FOREWORD EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3 INTRODUCTION 5 1. Background 6 2. India within the international context 6 3. India’s basic profile: Territory, population and income 7 4. India’s economy and competitiveness 9 I. RELATIONS BETWEEN INDIA AND LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN 14 II. TRADE AND INVESTMENT 16 1. India’s international trade 17 2. Doha Round negotiations: Areas of common interest 21 3. Imports 26 4. Exports 27 5. Investment 28 III. INDIA’S INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION 32 1. Coincidences in regional and multilateral organizations 32 2. Education and Innovation 38 3. SMEs 39 4. Tourism and transport 39 5. Environment and energy 40 IV. AREAS OF OPPORTUNITY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 42 1. Economic-trade area 42 2.
    [Show full text]
  • 8-11 July 2021 Venice - Italy
    3RD G20 FINANCE MINISTERS AND CENTRAL BANK GOVERNORS MEETING AND SIDE EVENTS 8-11 July 2021 Venice - Italy 1 CONTENTS 1 ABOUT THE G20 Pag. 3 2 ITALIAN G20 PRESIDENCY Pag. 4 3 2021 G20 FINANCE MINISTERS AND CENTRAL BANK GOVERNORS MEETINGS Pag. 4 4 3RD G20 FINANCE MINISTERS AND CENTRAL BANK GOVERNORS MEETING Pag. 6 Agenda Participants 5 MEDIA Pag. 13 Accreditation Media opportunities Media centre - Map - Operating hours - Facilities and services - Media liaison officers - Information technology - Interview rooms - Host broadcaster and photographer - Venue access Host city: Venice Reach and move in Venice - Airport - Trains - Public transports - Taxi Accomodation Climate & time zone Accessibility, special requirements and emergency phone numbers 6 COVID-19 PROCEDURE Pag. 26 7 CONTACTS Pag. 26 2 1 ABOUT THE G20 Population Economy Trade 60% of the world population 80 of global GDP 75% of global exports The G20 is the international forum How the G20 works that brings together the world’s major The G20 does not have a permanent economies. Its members account for more secretariat: its agenda and activities are than 80% of world GDP, 75% of global trade established by the rotating Presidencies, in and 60% of the population of the planet. cooperation with the membership. The forum has met every year since 1999 A “Troika”, represented by the country that and includes, since 2008, a yearly Summit, holds the Presidency, its predecessor and with the participation of the respective its successor, works to ensure continuity Heads of State and Government. within the G20. The Troika countries are currently Saudi Arabia, Italy and Indonesia.
    [Show full text]
  • The BRICS Model of South-South Cooperation
    August 2017 UJCI AFRICA-CHINA POLICY BRIEF 2 The BRICS Model of South-South Cooperation Swaran Singh UJCI Africa-China Policy Brief No 2 The BRICS Model of South-South Coperation Swaran Singh Professor in the School of International Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Series Editor: Dr David Monyae Published in August 2017 by: The University of Johannesburg Confucius Institute 9 Molesey Avenue, Auckland Park Johannesburg, South Africa www.confucius-institute.joburg External language editor: Riaan de Villiers Designed and produced by Acumen Publishing Solutions For enquiries, contact: Hellen Adogo, Research Assistant, UJCI Tel +27 (01)11 559-7504 Email: [email protected] Disclaimer: The views expressed in this Policy Brief do not necessarily reflect those of the UJCI. All rights reserved. This publication may not be stored, copied or reproduced without the permission of the UJCI. Brief extracts may be quoted, provided the source is fully acknowledged. UJCI Africa-China Brief No 2 | August 2017 THE earliest imaginations of South-South cooperation (SSC) have been traced to the Afro-Asian anti-colonial struggles of the 1940s. This is when initial ideas about shared identity, building solidarity towards asserting sovereignty, and channeling simmering opposition to the imperial ‘North’ first germinated. The Asian Relations Conference held in New Delhi in 1947, followed by the Afro-Asian Conference at Bandung (Indonesia) in April 1955, marked the first watersheds in the evolution of SSC, supported by the ‘non-alignment’ and ‘Third World’ paradigms (Chen and Chen 2010: 108-109). In 1960, the SSC thesis was further developed by the dependency theories of neo-Marxist sociologists from South America, who underlined the subservient nature of trade relations between their region and North America (Copeland 2009:64).
    [Show full text]
  • G-24 Urges Extending G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative Beyond FY2020 Amid COVID-19 Crisis Doaa A.Moneim, , Wednesday 14 Oct 2020
    G-24 urges extending G20 debt service suspension initiative beyond FY2020 amid COVID-19 crisis Doaa A.Moneim, , Wednesday 14 Oct 2020 Egypt’s Minister of International Cooperation Rania Al-Mashat, participated in the meeting, and raised the alarm about the pandemic’s impact on economies in Africa and the Middle East The Intergovernmental Group of 24 (G-24) urged the extension of the G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) beyond FY2020, asking the G20, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank Group (WBG) to work on putting in place a framework and mechanisms to foster timely, orderly and adequate debt resolution to involve all public and private creditors. The G-24 call came during a meeting held on Tuesday as a part of the IMF and the WBG’s Board of Governors annual meetings that kicked off on Monday. An estimated 100 million people have been thrown into poverty in developing countries, and workers in lower-middle income countries have lost 15 percent of their income, G-24said in a statement. “We are being squeezed in an economic vise as a consequence of COVID. Real productive capacity has been lost. Revenues and remittances are down whilst capital flight has increased, but we must spend to fight this pandemic and vigorously restart our economies. Sovereign debt distress is growing while International Markets are constraining. The prospect of a lost development decade is very real,” said Ken Ofori-Atta, Minister for Finance of Ghana and Chairman of G-24. G-24 meeting stressed that recovery from the pandemic’s impacts depends on the timely distribution of affordable vaccines to all countries on the basis of need.
    [Show full text]
  • G20: WRONG INTERNATIONAL FORUM for DEVELOPMENT Barry Herman the New School1
    [File: G20 on development pre-summit 2011] November 1, 2011 G20: WRONG INTERNATIONAL FORUM FOR DEVELOPMENT Barry Herman The New School1 On September 18-19, 2011, the “Development Working Group” of the Group of 20 met in Paris and sought to finalize its proposals for policies that the leaders of the 20 would likely adopt at their summit meeting on November 3-4 in France. It is “small beer.”Had the countries in the Group forged development-oriented compromises to end the stalemates in the main global trade, financial and environmental forums, they might have made a more convincing case for appointing themselves the leaders of global economic policy making. They have not, but have nevertheless begun directing the international institutions to follow the G20’s own development agenda. This note is offered to help understand the actions the Group is taking, which are quite detailed, but little discussed publicly.2 The Group of 20 (G20), originally an intergovernmental but technical financial forum at ministerial level, was transformed into a summit of G20 leaders in November 2008, as the global financial crisis spread fear in usually confident quarters while the world plunged into economic recession. The primary objective of the upgraded forum was to agree and act upon a coordinated economic rescue strategy. The leaders also agreed to work together to revise the international consensus on regulation of finance, whose laxness had been a prime cause of one of the worst financial crises in western history. While the issues of macroeconomic coordination and financial regulatory reform remain at the heart of its agenda, the G20 decided in 2010 to add promotion of development of developing countries to its agenda.
    [Show full text]
  • (G-77) Was Established on 15 June 1964 by Seventy-Seven Developing Countrie
    About the Group of 77 Establishment: The Group of 77 (G-77) was established on 15 June 1964 by seventy-seven developing countries signatories of the “Joint Declaration of the Seventy-Seven Developing Countries” issued at the end of the first session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva. Beginning with the first “Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77 in Algiers (Algeria) on 10 – 25 October 1967, which adopted the Charter of Algiers”, a permanent institutional structure gradually developed which led to the creation of Chapters of the Group of 77 with Liaison offices in Geneva (UNCTAD), Nairobi (UNEP), Paris (UNESCO), Rome (FAO/IFAD), Vienna (UNIDO), and the Group of 24 (G-24) in Washington, D.C. (IMF and World Bank). Although the members of the G-77 have increased to 134 countries, the original name was retained due to its historic significance. Aims: The Group of 77 is the largest intergovernmental organization of developing countries in the United Nations, which provides the means for the countries of the South to articulate and promote their collective economic interests and enhance their joint negotiating capacity on all major international economic issues within the United Nations system, and promote South-South cooperation for development. Structure: The functioning and operating modalities of the work of the G-77 in the various Chapters have certain minimal features in common such as a similarity in membership, decision-making and certain operating methods. A Chairman, who acts as its spokesman, coordinates the Group’s action in each Chapter. The Chairmanship, which is the highest political body within the organizational structure of the Group of 77, rotates on a regional basis (between Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean) and is held for one year in all the Chapters.
    [Show full text]
  • The Recent Trend of Income Inequality in Asia and How Policy Should Respond
    The Recent Trend of Income Inequality in Asia and How Policy Should Respond Working Paper commissioned by the Group of 24 and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung New York October 2018 Juzhong Zhuang1 This paper is part of the Growth and Reducing Inequality Working Paper Series, which is a joint effort of the G-24 and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung New York to gather and disseminate a diverse range of perspectives and research on trends, drivers and policy responses relevant to developing country efforts to boost growth and reduce inequality. The series comprises selected policy-oriented research papers contributed by presenters at a Special Workshop the G-24 held in Geneva (September 2017) in collaboration with the International Labour Organization and the Friedrich- Ebert-Stiftung, as well as relevant sessions in G-24 Technical Group Meetings. 1 The author is Senior Economic Advisor, Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department, at the Asian Development Bank. Views expressed in the paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect views and policies of the Asian Development Bank, its Board of Governors or the governments they represent. Abstract This paper examines the recent trend in income inequality in developing Asia and its key drivers and discusses how policy should respond. Over the past three decades, developing Asia achieved economic growth and reduced poverty faster than any other region of the world at any time in history. But many countries also experienced rising income inequality. Technological change, globalization, and market-oriented deregulation have driven the region’s rapid growth, but have also had significant distributional implications.
    [Show full text]
  • Philippines, March 2006
    Library of Congress – Federal Research Division Country Profile: Philippines, March 2006 COUNTRY PROFILE: PHILIPPINES March 2006 COUNTRY Formal Name: Republic of the Philippines (Republika ng Pilipinas). Short Form: Philippines (Pilipinas). Term for Citizen(s): Filipino(s). Capital: Manila. Click to Enlarge Image Major Cities: Located on Luzon Island, Metropolitan Manila, including the adjacent Quezon City and surrounding suburbs, is the largest city in the Philippines, with about 12 million people, or nearly 14 percent of the total population. Other large cities include Cebu City on Cebu Island and Davao City on Mindanao Island. Independence: The Philippines attained independence from Spain on June 12, 1898, and from the United States on July 4, 1946. Public Holidays: New Year’s Day (January 1), Holy Thursday (also called Maundy Thursday, movable date in March or April), Good Friday (movable date in March or April), Araw ng Kagitingan (Day of Valor, commonly called Bataan Day outside of the Philippines, April 9), Labor Day (May 1), Independence Day (June 12), National Heroes Day (last Sunday of August), Bonifacio Day (celebration of the birthday of Andres Bonifacio, November 30), Eid al Fitr (the last day of Ramadan, movable date), Christmas Day (December 25), Rizal Day (the date of the execution by the Spanish of José Rizal in 1896, December 30). Flag: The flag of the Philippines has two equal horizontal bands of blue (top) and red with a white equilateral triangle based on the hoist side; in the center of the triangle is a yellow sun with eight primary rays (each containing three individual rays), and in each corner of the triangle is Click to Enlarge Image a small yellow five-pointed star.
    [Show full text]